Michael Rowan writes speculative fiction about intelligence, science, humanity and what happens when our ability to discover something exceeds our wisdom to deal with what we find.
Before turning seriously to fiction, he spent much of his
career in technology, holding senior roles involving internet programmes,
systems integration and technology-led businesses. Long before that,
qualifications in Earth Sciences and Civil Engineering had already encouraged a
fascination with how complex systems interact and why they work - and perhaps
more importantly, why they sometimes don't.
His interests have always wandered beyond the boundaries of
any one discipline. From physics and earth sciences to philosophy, artificial
intelligence and consciousness, one curiosity has invariably led to another.
Cosmology and the complex relationship between science and belief are
particular fascinations. Eventually, they all tend to lead him towards the same
sort of question:
What if...?
His fiction begins there.
Music is nearly always playing at home and is a big part of
his life, providing both inspiration and a space to think. As he puts it, “It
helps me think deeply about complex stuff.”
Michael is particularly interested in artificial
intelligence not simply as a technology, but as a mirror through which we can
examine ourselves. What would another form of intelligence make of humanity?
Would greater intelligence necessarily lead to a desire for power? And if
something understood us better than we understood ourselves, could we trust
what it chose to tell us?
His first novel, The Pattern in the Noise, explores
some of those questions through three artificial intelligences, CERN and a
discovery that may be more important than humanity is ready to understand.
When he isn't writing, Michael can usually be found reading,
listening to music, travelling, walking his Romanian rescue dog Ruby, or
following some apparently innocent scientific question considerably further
down the rabbit hole than he originally intended.
Michael lives in North Somerset, England. To friends and family,
he's Mike, and occasionally Mikey.
